Australia's Gambling Industries - Productivity Commission

Box J.1
continued
Where minimising false positives does matter in the Commission’s analysis is when we
consider whether problem gamblers are getting value for money from their expenditure
on gambling. If we are to include part of that expenditure as a cost rather than being
offset by satisfaction achieved, the accurate identification of the population of problem
gamblers is more important. The Commission’s analysis of the SOGS score and its
relationship with adverse gambling consequences is presented in chapter 6.
Ideally, we would like information on the prevalence of adverse consequences from
gambling from the total population. The prevalence of the adverse consequences in
the general population is the important issue when measuring the extent of costs, not
whether these costs are generated by those easily ‘tagged’ as problem gamblers using
a measure such as SOGS. But this is rarely available. The costs of conducting a large
scale survey where all respondents were asked the full range of questions would be
prohibitive. The Commission’s national survey asked questions on adverse
consequences only from the group of ‘regular’ gamblers. These comprise 39 per cent
of the adult population. The Commission has assumed that there are no adverse
consequences for the rest of the population. While this, in principle, means an
understatement of the level of costs, it is unlikely to be significant.
Whether these costs are concentrated in a particular identifiable group is nonetheless
important (though not for measuring the extent of costs) as it can be used by
government when targeting policy action. The distribution of reported adverse
consequences by SOGS scores is discussed in chapter 6
In the few instances where the survey of problem gamblers in counselling has been
used, the Commission has attempted to compensate for the expected tendency to
overstate the prevalence rate by applying this to the smaller number of problem
gamblers who most closely match the group in treatment — those scoring 10 or
more on the SOGS (46 800 people), rather than the wider group of problem
gamblers, scoring 5 or more (293 000 people).
The survey information on prevalence
The National Gambling Survey asks all regular gamblers questions on a range of
adverse consequences of gambling. All questions were asked on the basis of ‘in the
last 12 months’, and many also asked if the gambler had ‘ever’ experienced the
adverse consequence as a result of their gambling. The Survey of Clients of
Counselling Agencies comprised a similar range of questions, asking the gambler to
relate the questions ‘only to the time when you were experiencing problems with
your gambling’. The results from the survey indicated that the average period of
problem gambling was 8.9 years. The SOGS questions were asked on the basis of
‘in the last 12 months’.
MEASURING COSTS J.3